Stormbringer is a weekly hobby magazine from Hachette Partworks introducing players to Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. In this 80-week series, our intrepid magazine-receiver will be reviewing each individual issue, its included models, and gaming materials. A Premium US subscription was provided to Goonhammer for review purposes. If you want to follow along at home, US Customers can check out Stormbringer here.

It’s been a minute since we had a Premium issue, each of which has typically been focused around one big centerpiece kit. This one is a smidge different, as instead we get a smattering of stunties with Premium Issue 3: Kharadron Overlords.

The Narrative Materials

This is the part where I regret to inform you that there’s not altogether too much here. Instead there’s brief descriptions and Battle Records for the Aetheric Navigator, Skywardens, and the Grundstock Gunhauler. Aetheric Navigators do what their name describes, mapping the skies and guiding their ships through the realms. Skywardens are airborne infantry, floating around on Endrins, the dirigible-esque metal balls you see floating above them. These aether-gold-powered metal balloons take them across the field quickly, where they can stab, shoot, and drop airborne mines. Grundstock Gunhaulers, lastly, are floating warships with bombs, cannons, and bigger versions of the endrins and propellers that move along the smaller dwarf dudes.

The Hobby Materials

We get kits for each of the aforementioned units, and while that may only be 5 models, they’re a representative cut of the Kharadron range. Assembling these models, you may notice a new innovation among Dwarfdom: spindly bits. The Aetheric Navigator has a stocky core, but then it’s all little whirligigs and an oddly curved beard that make for an aesthetic I’m not altogether wild about. The Skywardens are the full kit that can also be built as Endrinriggers, but instructions are only provided for the pointy harpoon variety of floating duardin. It’s a solid kit with a fair bit of subtle customization available to it, plus some fun extra power drills and such for detailing bits. They sadly are attached to these incredibly dinky and fragile flight stands, all of which you will notice have been replaced with tall basing in the photo above. I think they’re a stronger take on the steampunk dwarf aesthetic than the Navigator. Saving the biggest and best for last we have a Grundstock Gunhauler, which is one of the larger and more intricate models received in this magazine thus far. Its cute little crew, stock of cannonballs, and embarrassment of detail make for a nice little centerpiece for the burgeoning Kharadron player, though it too is on a flight stand I don’t fully trust given its top heavy nature.

More intricate than the build instructions are those for painting, which break down the subassemblies of the Gunhauler and how one should mask off the flight stands you’ll be working with. Looking through these step by step instructions – even moreso than looking at the bare plastic or painted examples online – one thing is clear: These models are a lot. There’s even an almost taunting “did you manage to paint all the details?” boxout on the last page. There is so much overlapping metal texture that it’s really on the painter to find a way to make them stand out from each other, and there are usually some array of other doodleboppers on any given model that also make for a painting challenge. However, the instructions are thorough, and we’ve gotten enough paint over the course of this magazine that we get some solid final results. There’s even a tutorial for painting gemstones, limited as it may be by our color selection.

The Gaming Materials

Outdated rules abound for our floaty beardlings, and the group of units work reasonably well together. The Navigator hangs out way in back, handing out buffs out upwards of 30″, while the Gunhauler floats around zapping stuff and the Skywardens clear off any would-be melee threats. There’s little tutorials as well, but they aren’t much good in a year and edition one removed from their writing.

Lastly we have a new mission: Lightning Raid. A Kharadron supply of lightning rods has been pilfered by Orruks, and they need to be retrieved, lest they come out of the Skywardens’ pay. The board is extra long, with a single objective at the far end. Our newly gathered Kharadron collection is up against a small group of Hobgrots and Orruk heroes, and while that may seem woefully one sided, each turn a single Kruleboyz unit gets summoned to the battlefield. I like the asymmetry of it, though I imagine it’ll mostly just be the Gunhauler Tokyo Drifting around the board and shooting up whatever sad pack of Orruk goobers show up each turn.

Final Verdict:

My old napkin math priced each of these Premium issues at about $60. Totaling up our trio of kits, they’d normally be $158 separately, so you’re seeing a frankly wackadoo level of savings. It would be an even better deal if they were actually the units from the Kharadron Overlords Spearhead, but I can’t exactly hold a partworks magazine for an outdated edition of the game up to that level of foreknowledge.

See you next issue, warhams.

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